Data Analytics of Christmas Trees

There’s nothing quite like the warmth and festive radiance of a Christmas tree. It’s also a big business – there are about 350 million natural Christmas trees growing on farms in all 50 U.S. states, with more than 17 million trees harvested every year, according to the Washington Post.

Of course, these figures only represent natural Christmas trees. When factoring in artificial Christmas trees, the numbers become even loftier. According to the National Christmas Tree Association, $2.35 billion worth of real and artificial trees were sold in the U.S. in 2013. Meanwhile, a Nielsen survey conducted by the American Christmas Tree Association found that 79 percent of U.S. homes displayed a tree last year, with 20 percent sporting real trees while 80 percent were of the man-made variety.

But did you know that nearly half of all real trees are grown in six counties between two states on opposite coasts?

For a deeper dive on the Christmas tree industry, TIBCO Spotfire Data Scientist Ian Cook created a visualization which breaks down U.S. Christmas tree production by state, by revenue since 2007 – as well as comparisons between the sales of real and artificial trees.

Here are some highlights from the findings:

Frasier fir is the most popular Christmas tree species in the U.S., representing about 33 percent of all trees sold and roughly 36 percent of real tree revenues. Noble fir (21.7 percent) and Douglas fir (18.3 percent) are the next highest Christmas tree species as a percentage of sales while all other classes accounted for single-digit sales.

Oregon and North Carolina are the first and second largest Christmas tree producing states in the U.S. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin round out the top five Christmas tree producing states. The lowest producing state? Hawaii.

In 2013, Americans purchased some 50 million real and artificial trees. Nearly 70 percent of all trees purchased last year were real while 30 percent were artificial trees.